Diversity The World Can’t Have Wild Tigers and Eat Them, Too BRIAN GRATWICKE, ∗ ELIZABETH L. BENNETT,† STEVEN BROAD,‡ SARAH CHRISTIE,§ ADAM DUTTON, ∗∗ GRACE GABRIEL,†† CRAIG KIRKPATRICK,‡‡ AND KRISTIN NOWELL§§ ∗ Save The Tiger Fund, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, 1120 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. Suite 900, Washington, D.C. 20009, U.S.A., email brian.gratwicke@gmail.com †Wildlife Conservation Society, 2300 Southern Boulevard, Bronx, NY 10460, U.S.A. ‡TRAFFIC International, 219a Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, United Kingdom §Zoological Society of London, Regent’s Park, London, NW1 4RY, United Kingdom ∗∗ Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford, Department of Zoology, Tubney House, Abingdon Road, Tubney, Abingdon, OX13 5QL, United Kingdom ††International Fund For Animal Welfare, P.O. Box 193, 411 Main Street, Yarmouth, Port, MA 02675, U.S.A. ‡‡TRAFFIC East Asia, Regional Office Room 2001, Double Building, 22 Stanley Street, Central, Hong Kong §§Cat Action Treasury, P.O. Box 332, Cape Neddick, ME 03902, U.S.A. In 1993 China banned all trade of tiger bones in response to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) directives and threats of international trade sanctions (Hemley & Mills 1999). This action closed down a significant legal indus- try in tiger parts in China, which exported 27 million units of tiger products to 26 countries between 1990 and 1992 (Mills & Jackson 1994). Since this ban was enacted, however, the Chinese CITES management authority has occasionally floated proposals to reopen limited trade in tiger parts from captive-bred tigers (Mills & Jackson 1994; Delegation of the People’s Republic of China to the CITES Standing Committee 2006). In 2007 farmed tiger popu- lations had grown to more than 5000, and investors in tiger farms began lobbying for international support to lift China’s 14-year ban. This idea has encountered strong opposition from many tiger-range countries who drafted a decision at the 2007 CITES conference of the parties stating: “... tigers should not be bred for trade in their parts and derivatives." (CITES, 2007). In June 2006 China’s State Forestry Administration in- vited an international delegation to conduct an indepen- dent review of proposals from tiger farmers to reopen the trade in tiger parts and products from captive-bred animals (Nowell & Ling 2007). The delegation did not include recognized international experts in tiger manage- ment or conservation. Its members claimed that flooding the market with legally supplied, captive-bred tiger parts and products would undercut the illegal supply from tiger poachers and benefit wild tigers (Mitra 2006; Lapointe et al. 2007). Paper submitted June 4, 2007; revised manuscript accepted June 18, 2007. From a purely economic perspective, their claim is fraught with problems. A simple cost analysis of wild versus farmed tiger parts indicates that it would cost at least US$4000 to raise a tiger to adulthood in cap- tivity (Lapointe et al. 2007) and as little as $15–$20 to poach a wild tiger (Damania et al. 2003). Even allow- ing for the costs of transporting wild tiger products to end markets and occasional losses to enforcement ac- tion along the way, the cost of producing farmed tiger parts would clearly be far higher, perhaps even by a fac- tor of 10. This gross discrepancy would offer substantial economic incentives for poachers and smugglers to un- dercut farmers in any legal market, despite the risks as- sociated with being caught and penalized. Furthermore, consumers of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) prefer products made from wild individuals, believing they are more potent than farm-raised ones. These, therefore, can command a significantly higher price—as demonstrated in the bear-bile market (WSPA 2007). The tiger-farming lobby suggests there are ways to cer- tify captive-raised products but, as yet, distinguishing be- tween farmed and wild tiger parts is impossible. Thus, opening a market of tiger parts from any source would offer a clear avenue to “launder” illegal parts and prod- ucts from wild tigers and sell them as legal. This raises the question of how effective the ban has been at restricting supply of and reducing the demand for tiger bones, and we have evidence from a number of sources that shows there is a decline in use of tiger parts since the ban. The 1993 ban was very effective at reducing the supply of tiger bone in China (Nowell & Ling 2007). Fewer than 222 Conservation Biology, Volume 22, No. 1, 222–223 C 2008 Society for Conservation Biology DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2007.00802.x